Times of Trouble Read Online Free Page B

To anyone other than my mum and me, this message would
have been meaningless spam. But I could see what mum saw. It was
from my sister Sophie. And she was in trouble.
    My mind was racing at
a hundred miles an hour. Mum could tell I had cottoned on. We both
stopped walking.
    ‘ Ob La Di Ob La Da,
Life goes on, Bra, La-la how the life goes on.’ I spoke the words
in a monotone; it wasn’t the moment for song.
    Mum nodded. ‘And she
needs help.’
    ‘ Help, I need
somebody, help, not just anybody, or else her life won’t go on.’
More Beatles lyrics.
    Mum nodded again,
this time more slowly.
    The email had been
sent from a nonsense address, [email protected], on the 15th
October last year.
    ‘ What happened when
you wrote back? How could she have known your email address? You
haven't had one for long’.
    Mum was now red in
the face, her forced calmness disintegrating.
    ‘ When you put my name
in a search engine on the internet, my email address comes up as
the contact on my book-club's website. That’s how she must have
found me. When I replied, the email bounced back. It said the
address didn’t exist. But it did exist because it was right there.
I must have tried it 20 times, and it just kept bouncing back. I
asked her where she was, what was wrong, how could I help? But the
message just kept coming up that there was a permanent error, from
some mailer daemon.’ Mum’s voice started to shake. She sounded
shrill and panicked as she recounted her frustration.
    ‘ The account must
have been deleted after she sent the email,’ I said. ‘But why
didn’t she tell you where she was? How were you meant to help her
if she didn’t give you any details?’
    ‘ I can only imagine
she meant to write more at a later time, but couldn’t. Or someone
else could see what she was writing, and she didn’t want them to
know where she was. There has to be some reason.’
    Trust mum to give
Sophie the benefit of the doubt. So like a mother to look past her
child’s faults. My fear for Sophie was suddenly replaced by an
extraordinary irritation only a sibling can feel. What the hell was
she doing? We hadn't heard from her for seven years. And suddenly
this cryptic email showed up out of the blue, asking for help, but
not providing us the means to give it. It was completely useless.
Why contact us by email anyway? She knew where we lived. It was her
home too once. We still had the same phone number we always had for
god’s sake!
    Mum seemed to be lost
in thought, but there was more to tell. About the money, for one
thing. She took a deep breath and went on talking.
    ‘ I decided right away
I couldn’t just ignore the email. But I felt so lost, I didn’t know
what to do. I couldn’t tell you about it because you would have
been so worried, and you were already very upset about, well you
know, things.’ She paused, while we both contemplated the
understatement of the century. I hadn’t left my cave (bedroom) for
a month around the time it was sent. No wonder I failed to notice
mum getting stressed about an email from Sophie.
    ‘ Anyway,’ she went
on,’ I did some research. I found a private investigator who was
willing to help me find her. You must understand Ellen, I couldn’t
just do nothing. You do understand don’t you?’
    Of course I
understood, but I was still trying to come to terms with what it
must have been like for mum for the past few months. I didn’t know
what to say.
    ‘ The private
investigator, Liam Kingsley, has done a wonderful job. He really is
very good. Whatever trouble she is in, I know she is still alive
Ellen. He is sure of that. She doesn’t seem to stay in the same
place for very long. But she’s definitely still alive. I really
feel he is getting closer to finding her.’
    Relief rushed through
my veins. I didn't want to admit there was a possibility Sophie was
dead. She wouldn't send an email like that unless something was
drastically wrong, and the email account disappearing was not